


Conjuration

by cassyl



Series: Magic for Beginners [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyl/pseuds/cassyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock is a stage magician and John is his assistant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conjuration

Sherlock Holmes is the greatest magician London – possibly the world – has seen in a century. It’s not hubris to say so, although Sherlock Holmes certainly has his fair share of pride. In this case, though, it’s merely a question of press clippings. _The Telegraph_ called him ‘an unqualified genius’ and _the Guardian_ proclaimed his most recent show ‘a brilliant update of classic Golden Age showmanship, a welcome antidote to the overly eyelinered spectacle of contemporary celebrity magicians.’ Unlike illusionists who bury themselves alive or make buildings disappear, Sherlock Holmes is best known for his feats of mentalism, in which he intuits with preternatural accuracy the entire life histories of members of his audience. In this day and age, it shouldn’t seem all that spectacular an accomplishment, but in Sherlock Holmes’ hands, it’s incredible.

Everything about Sherlock Holmes is incredible, in fact. Everything about him is larger than life, his presence onstage so blisteringly intense that he has no need of circus acrobats or white tigers to put on a sensational performance. He doesn’t trifle with smoke and mirrors or chameleon silks. He appears on stage in a sharp bespoke suit, no top hat on his crest of dark curls, no cape – just a man with an extraordinary talent.

John, on the other hand, is perfectly ordinary. In fact, he’s hired precisely because he’s so ordinary. With his average height and average looks and average beige jumper, he might be anybody – and, in fact, he is, every evening at eight o’clock and twice on Sundays.

It’s good work, if you can get it, particularly for an invalided army doctor looking for a little bit of extra cash to supplement his pension. And, really, when he thinks about it, it seems almost absurd that he should be paid just to sit in a darkened theater and watch someone else work. He’d do this job for free – for that matter, he’d be willing to pay to do it, the way everyone else does. But John does the rest of the audience one better, because every night, he gets to walk up into those bright lights and, for just a moment, share the stage.

When he tells his sister he’s been working as a plant for a stage magician, she doesn’t understand. “Couldn’t you get some locum work or something?” Harry asks. “Or, God, if you’re that hard up, I can lend you some money.”

But it’s not that he’s too proud to accept a loan from his sister. Or, well, he is, but that’s beside the point. The point is, he likes this job. He likes the secret of it, the thrill of complicity. He likes knowing how the illusion is done. And when Sherlock calls out, “May I have a volunteer from the audience?” and his eyes lock with John’s in the crowd, well, there’s nowhere else John would rather be.

Because John gets it. He understands, on a deep, visceral level, why Sherlock Holmes is the greatest magician of his generation. It’s astonishingly simple, when you get right down to it. The genius of Sherlock’s act – the sheer, unbelievable genius of it – is that there is no magic.

To the untrained eye, what Sherlock does looks like conjuration. He can infer everything about a person from one quick glance, has escaped from conditions no one should be able to get out of. But the difference is not that he’s better at fooling the punters. It’s simply that Sherlock sees – and is willing to do – things that no one else would ever think of. He has no regard for convention, caution, or, at times, his own safety. All that matters to him is the work.

In any other walk of life, his talents would make him a freak, a pariah, but on the stage, they make him a marvel. The audience loves him, which never fails to astonish John, because, as amazing as he is, Sherlock is hardly what you’d call personable. He does have a flair for drama, though, and that serves as an adequate smokescreen for what would otherwise be seen as a startling invasion of privacy. Observations that would offend someone on the street become a fascinating trick under the hot stage lights – though God help the person who refers to what Sherlock does as ‘tricks.’

“It’s all perfectly obvious,” Sherlock often says, his lips set in a contemptuous snarl, “if anyone would actually observe.” He scorns his fans for being taken in, even as he craves their attention. The frailty of genius, John has come to realize, is that it needs an audience.

Luckily, Sherlock will never be without an audience. He sells out the house every night, and even if he didn’t, even if all the crowds went away, he would always have John. John could watch the man’s dexterous fingers all night long, and he never tires of seeing Sherlock deduce someone with a single sweep of that cold gaze. He stands in awe of Sherlock’s precise intellect, that mind that never stops working.

He’s always coming up with new routines, has a surplus of them, in fact, that would make even the most prolific _ingénieur_ weep. Today, it’s an escapology number that involves him taking a sedative and then breaking out of an airtight box. Of course, because he’s Sherlock, it will be an actual sedative and an actual airtight box. John is listening with half an ear while he helps Mrs. Hudson, the stage manager, check the ropes for Sherlock’s present escape act.

“No,” he’s saying, pacing violently back and forth across the now-empty stage, “a pill won’t do, a pill could be anything – it could be paracetemol, for all they’d know. It would have to be an injection. More sense of spectacle, that . . .”

He lapses back into unintelligible murmurs, and John loses the thread of Sherlock’s diatribe as he struggles to untangle a particularly obstinate knot.

But there’s something niggling at him, some tension between his shoulder blades, and when he looks up, Sherlock is staring right at him. “You’re a doctor,” he says. “In fact, you’re an army doctor.” There’s a wild look in his eyes, and John can’t help his heart speeding up in his chest.

“Yes.” John feels his fingers going still around the rope.

“Any good?” Sherlock asks, and John says, “Very good.”

Which is how John winds up being promoted from plant to assistant. He’s certainly not your typical magician’s assistant – and thank God, because he’d look terrible in a sequined bathing costume – but, then, Sherlock Holmes has never been one for doing anything expected. Instead of a beautiful smiling blonde with gleaming teeth, he takes John, the plain, stalwart doctor, as his foil, and somehow it just works. _They_ work, the perfect team. John serves as an anchor to Sherlock’s mad flash, a steadying hand whenever he’s about to fly off too far afield. The audience loves their odd-couple chemistry.

And John – well, John couldn’t be happier. He gets to spend every night under those white-hot lights, but of course the lamps pale in comparison to Sherlock’s blinding intellect. Every night, John gets to watch, up close, as he observes and deduces and _knows_ everything, and every night, Sherlock puts his complete faith in John, turning his arm over to John’s hands and mildly letting him inject the sedative, allowing John to catch him as the drugs take effect and lower him into the airtight chamber. And every night, John waits along with the audience, breathless, for Sherlock to free himself. And every night, he does, to uproarious applause, and it’s John’s hand he takes as he makes his final bow.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone else would like to take up the gauntlet on this premise, I would be so delighted to read it.


End file.
